


It's In the Blood

by Aithilin



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Blood, Fluff, M/M, Prompt Fill, Romance, Vampirism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 12:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4020145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Fai asks Kurogane for blood, it's in Nihon, and it's because he's realized that he wants to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's In the Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Potclean asked (ages ago, sorry): "During their stay in Nihon, for the first time Fai asked Kurogane for his blood, because he finally wants to keep living. The feeding is a much different experience than has ever been before."
> 
> If anyone would like to send me more prompts or headcanons, I'm on both Tumblr and Dreamwidth with the same screenname as here! I'm always happy to take prompts, it just takes a bit to get them out.

There were emotions running through the veins, carried by blood as it flowed and pumped and was refreshed in the body itself. Blood’s ability to carry thought, emotion, all the aspects of life that didn’t stop with drawing breath and moving, was why blood magic was the strongest form of magic in any world and why ghosts lingered at the spots of their death. It carried everything with it when it was shed, and it took a very powerful magician, or a very particular creature, to pick up on the emotions carried as one person cut through another. 

Fai was both of those things now. 

He never thought that he would bleed for his little constructed family. Nor that they would willing bleed for him. His blood had been reserved for his brother— to restore his brother’s life. It was a blood spell he had been weaving ever since he saw his twin’s blood on sullied snow. It was a blood curse from his uncle that cursed them both, that let the curses from Reed take hold, and it was blood that would undo both. Fai had been determined to not shed a drop for the other travellers. His blood was for his brother. 

But then the Syaoran they had started the journey with lost his soul. And Fai bled for his family. 

The way emotions carried— straight from the body, circulated by the heart, fueled by the brain and soul and strength of the blood in the temper— was one of the many reasons Fai hated to drink from Kurogane. When he was “saved”— turned, twisted, made into this cruel thing that had to drink and cut and bite away at the life of another— Fai had felt the emotions of the vampire that brought him back from death. Indifference, callous cold; a vampire could hide emotions from his prey, and from his blood. Kurogane could not. 

When he was saved, Fai realised the depth of Kurogane’s affections, even if the man didn’t know it himself. He felt the pain at seeing the death of a loved one, seeing the fraying hope that drove him to ask to create a monster— to pay for a monster’s life— without understanding what that really meant. Fai felt (though didn’t realise what it was until later, when he could analyse his own memory of the whole event) the love and despair and hope and fear that coursed through Kurogane’s veins far stronger than the anger and sense of duty. 

At the time, it was a new sort of chain around Fai’s throat. Something new to slave him to another, bind him to another promise, another life. 

At the time, Fai thought that it was selfish of Kurogane. That it was the cruel, ill-conceived wish of a child lashing out in fear. He didn’t think that Kurogane could understand the depth of what he had done. And he hated the ninja for every drop of love and kindness and hope he tasted in the blood that was so willingly shed to bind them. 

In Ceres, Kurogane bled for him. 

There was more magic in that single spell cast worlds ago than there was in Fai’s whole body by the end, and it was enough of a trade to drag Fai from the ruins of his own life and promises, and his failures. When Kurogane cut himself to save them, Fai was more monster than magician. And he understood better than Kurogane or the children just what had been sacrificed and what he had lost because of it. 

Or thought he had lost. 

They were in Nihon for days, nearly months, to recover. Waiting to see if Kurogane would draw himself back to life and to them. And to his mission. When he was awake and alive and regaining his strength, Fai stayed by him as often as he could. When he understood the depth of the emotions Kurogane carried through his veins— when hee realised that Kurogane understood them too— he tried to make amends. 

It was a quiet night in Kurogane’s rooms when he asked to feed. 

He wanted to live, he wanted to stay bound to Kurogane, he didn’t want to push away the only family he had left who had sacrificed something for him. 

It was a quiet night in a strange country, just weeks after losing everything he had ever known, that Fai decided that he still had a life worth living. And he wanted to live it. 

The feeding was different this way. Kurogane had no knife to cut himself with. There was no indelicate way to tear and break and force the blood to flow— to force Fai into acepting the emotional weight that Kurogane carried all this time alone. It was different when Fai approached, and asked for the burden Kurogane had promised to share. Asked for his life to be shared. And shed. And to let flow between them. 

But it was with a grin, sharp, teasing, that Fai manoeuvred arounf Kurogane’s confusion about the way it would work. He smirked as he climbled into Kurogane’s lap and challenged the other man to push him away. He didn’t expect the grin back and the arm around his waist to keep him in place. So he teased away the strangeness that it felt to be held. 

“So lopsided, Kuro-sama. We should find a way to fix that.”

“I thought you were hungry, idiot.”

“Maybe.”

It started with licks and tests. Like the horrors he had heard and read as a child, he went for Kurogane’s throat. He felt the steady pulse beneath his lips and the heat beneath the skin. He was scared to bite, in case he hurt the other man— in case the stories were true and he tore skin and vein and couldn’t repair the damage. 

It was slow. 

Licks and nips and tests to see which kind of pressure from new teeth could draw a litle bead of life through broken skin. He kept his arms around Kurogane, moved in his lap, pressed close to feel every muscle tense and relax and tense again as he tested how this should go. Fai felt breath hitch and pulse skip when he nipped at certain spots. He felt strong muscles tense and pull him closer at others. He heard and felt the frustration welling up in the strong, much more mortal, body beneath him. 

“Just bite, mage. I’m not delicate and you’re not that careful.”

He was tempted to reply. To tease back, to play a bit with his food.

Instead he bit into the place where the pulse ran hottest and he could sense the veins beneath. 

It wasn’t the cruelty he had expected. It wasn’t the leeching of one life to sustain his own. It wasn’t like before where there was a sour taste left and bitterness between them. Now, on a quiet night in a strange country, with Kurogane slowly recovering from his own sacrifice, and with a fresh, tentative forgiveness between them, Fai didn’t feel like a monster. 

Blood carried emotions as well as life. It was why souls could linger at the place of death and why blood magic was so powerful. Blood carried the life it came from, with all the history of the heart and the memories of the mind poured into it. 

Kurogane’s blood was hot, and deep, and burning. It carried love and hope, and a fierce urge to protect those that were the source of both emotions. 

Drinking from Kurogane, carefully, kindly, listening for signs of distress and hearing only mild discomfort followed by peace, Fai understood what Kurogane had tried to offer him before. Kurogane was a child, a silly, rash child. Who did silly, impulsive things when he didn’t know any other way around a situation. 

“You want me to share your life,” Fai muttered, cleaning the wound he had opened and pressing fresh bandages to it. “You want me to live by your side, as long as we’re both living.”

“Yes.”

The teasing smile returned, and Fai kissed the bandage once it was secure. “You have a strange way of proposing marriage, Kuro-rin.”

“What!?”


End file.
